What I've Learned on Facebook

Facebook has been around for quite a while. It started with college students, but gradually spread upwards through the Generation Xers and Baby Buster generations. Now, it is finally reaching into the big, now kinda old Baby Boomer generation. That includes me, so finally I've gotten caught up in the craze. I've had a basically inactive Facebook account for some time, but last Saturday I logged in and found a bunch of friends requests waiting for me. That got me going on a crusade to see who I could locate among friends, acquaintances, and first cousins of people I used to know in elementary school. My "Friends List" tells me that I have added 72 new friends in the past two weeks. In truth, I have added 72 friends in the last six days . . . and at this moment have a total of 86 friends. Since I do know a few old fogies who have not yet succumbed to the Facebook craze, that gives me hope that I might have even more than 86 real life friends.


However, let me tell you a few things I have learned about Facebook these last six days.

• It's lots of fun to re-establish contact with people I've known from long ago. I've exchanged notes and in some cases used the online chat feature with quite a few old friends, many of whom I haven't seen or heard from in 30+ years.

• There are some fantastic features to Facebook. It's great to be able to see pictures of people you haven't seen in a long time. However, it can also be a little shocking because we don't look exactly like we used to. One lady I remembered from college as a sweet, shapely brunette has now become a not-quite-so-svelte, white-haired grandmother-type (who is still just as sweet, I'm sure). Some of the guys have for some strange reason lost a considerable portion of their hair; others, like myself, still have our hair, but it has gotten quite a bit lighter in color for some puzzling cause. Most of us have grown somewhat broader, although not any taller. Hey, I know that's called aging, but it can still be shocking to be reminded of how we have changed over a few decades. Facebook also offers some fun apps (applications) which can be a fun way to spend some spare time.

• There are some silly, next-to-useless features to Facebook, too. I won't identify any of these by name since one person's "useless" might be somebody else's "greatest thing ever." However, some of the quizzes and games don't exactly float my boat. But to each his own.

• Facebook can take up lots of time. Everybody needs to be a good time manager. That has always been one of my challenges and Facebook doesn't necessarily help my struggle. Probably, the fascination will wear off in time, though, so this may become less of a problem for me.

• Facebook friendships (like those in real life) will require some effort to maintain. Real friendships aren't static things, they are either growing or dying (like most other living things in life). I suspect some of the old friends I've discovered will fade away into obscurity once again because either I won't put forth the effort to keep up with them, or they won't have any interest in staying in touch with me. However, that doesn't mean we don't have good memories of shared experiences in the past or that we do not still think of ourselves as friends.

• Re-connecting with old friends can bring on some unpleasant news. It is always possible that we might learn that someone we once felt closeness with has passed on into eternity. That hasn't happened to me yet through Facebook, but inevitably it will at some point. It's also possible to learn about friends' marriages breaking up. Several of the couples who met and married while attending the same college at the same time I did are now divorced. In many cases, those marriages failed because one partner or the other committed infidelity. It is always a sad thing to learn about that kind of sin and the consequences it has in the lives of people whom you care about. It has also brought some sadness to me this past week to learn of three or four people who were once faithful members of the Lord's church, but who have made spiritual changes which (at least according to my understanding) have taken them in the wrong direction away from the Lord's will. On the other hand, knowing this gives me the opportunity to pray for them, and I would not have known of that need had I not renewed some connections on Facebook.

Who knows where this is all going? Inevitably, Facebook has to lose some of its "cool" factor because so many of us not-so-youngs are getting involved with it. Several of my new Facebook friends are sons and daughters of my contemporaries, whose own parents have not yet jumped on this bandwagon. I last knew some of these twenty- and thirty-somethings when they were children in churches where I used to preach. So, maybe, our joint participation in something like Facebook helps bridge some generations -- and thus surely is a good thing.